After employing a silver halide light sensitive photographic materials as an image forming material, silver coverage thereof has been conducted in such a way that the photographic material is allowed to be dipped in an aqueous alkali solution and stirred with heating to separate constitutional materials from the photographic material, and thereby silver is recovered from the constitutional components. Recently, however, image forming materials have undergone many changes and new type of image forming materials have been introduced, in which the components are not easily removable, such as "Dry View" available from Imation Corp., "Dry Star" 3000 available from Agfa-Gavaert AG or "Helios" available from Sterling Corp.
In conventional silver halide photographic materials, gelatin has mainly been employed as binder, which is readily soluble in an aqueous alkali solution. However, the binder(s) used in such new products as described above, which are not mainly composed of gelatin, cannot be dissolved by conventional means. As another means for recovering silver from a used silver halide photographic material is known a method in which the photographic material is subjected to combustion and silver is recovered from the residue. However, this method, in which the support is also burned, is not desirable in terms of recent environmental protection measures.
In view of the foregoing status, there is desired a method for recovering the support or other useful constituent material from new image forming materials substitutable for conventional silver halide photographic materials and a method of reuse thereof.
When image forming materials are treated in a solvent to dissolve at least a part of the solid constituent materials on the support to separate it from the support, consumption of the large amount of required solvent is not preferred in terms of the environment and cost. Further, minimal solvent or water is preferred in recovery of useful ingredients from the solution. As a means therefor, it is preferred to recover the solvent by distillation and to condense the image forming components. However, increasing the concentration rate results in an increase in viscosity, making its handling more difficult.